


Ladybug's Burden

by Peppermint_Miraculous (Peppermint_Shamrock)



Series: Peppermint's Spooktober One-shots [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Exploration of the Psychological Effect of Being a Superhero, Gen, Miraculous Spooktober, Spooktober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 22:33:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16273724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peppermint_Shamrock/pseuds/Peppermint_Miraculous
Summary: Ladybug walks the silent streets, with nothing but the faith of a city that no longer exists that she can once again save them.Written for Miraculous Spooktober Day 12 Prompt - Nightmare





	Ladybug's Burden

**Author's Note:**

> Background Music: [The Ultimate Weapon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GvBbbYcD8o)
> 
> Something a bit different than my usual, a bit of an experiment with present tense.
> 
> As I mentioned in the tags, this is a short exploration of how having the entire city depend on her might affect Marinette. As such, it's a bit heavier/darker than canon. It's not all doom and gloom, but it is _very_ different in tone than the previous fic in this series.
> 
> Some metaphorical references to blood and death.

Silence is the bane of the anxious.

If one can even call it silence when every thought is as loud as thunder, echoing over and over in her mind. Only the sound of her own footfalls against the pavement, her breath, and her yo-yo provide the slightest noise. Noises that are deafening, but cannot drown her worries out.

Everything else is quiet, and still. The usual bustle of the city is missing, the chatter of voices, the hum of traffic, the chirping of birds – all of it is gone. Nothing breathes. The streets, the city, perhaps the world – is empty. She is alone, with not even a single pigeon for company.

She could detransform. She’s tempted, sorely tempted, just to hear another voice again. But she can’t risk it. It is Ladybug who is alone in the ghost of Paris, not Marinette. And somewhere, the Akuma, and Papillon, are watching, which does nothing to ease her solitude, and everything to increase her anxiety.

And perhaps Tikki, too, would vanish from this world, just as everyone else had. Then Marinette would be truly alone.

The faces of the departed are burned into her mind. She had watched them fade away, one-by-one. And each one who had met her gaze in their final moments had the same expression. Hauntingly serene, not because of anything the Akuma had done, but simply because they trusted her.

It would almost have been better if they had been afraid.

Their voices, too, barely more than whispers, bellow in her head.

_I know you’ll save us, Ladybug._

This is not the first time. She has seen the entire city fall before, while she remained and fought as the sole survivor. She has always carried the double-edged sword of the people’s faith, that gives her the resolve to continue just as it cuts into her heart. She has watched countless times as those she cares about sacrifice themselves for her, without the slightest trace of doubt in her ability to save them all.

She should be used to it. She isn’t. Perhaps that’s a good thing. If the day comes that it no longer affects her, could she still be considered a hero?

This is the worst yet. At least when the citizens had been zombified, they were still _there_. They made noise, lots of it. They were a tangible threat, that could be fought, and avoided. She could _do_ something about the situation.

Absence cannot be fought, or avoided.

She has seen people fade and vanish before. It had been devastating then, but she had not had time to dwell on it, because time itself had been rewound, and everything undone.

Now…she has time and all the silence in the world to dwell on it. Time enough for every insidious whisper of “what if I can’t do it?” to magnify in an infinite echo across her skull. Time to wonder if she is really someone worth believing in, someone worth dying for.

Because it _is_ her that they’ve died for. She’s too young to have her hands stained with sacrificial blood, but right now she’s drowning in a city’s worth.

Rationally, she knows that Papillon is responsible for it all, but she can’t help but blame herself. She’s tricked everyone, she thinks, into believing too much of her, into being too dependent on her. They do not worship her, but she is their god nonetheless. Because what other choice do they have? When anyone at any moment can have their body and mind twisted and conscripted to be used as a weapon against their friends and family and city, the only way to keep living, to keep from existing in constant fear and despair, is to have absolute faith in a savior.

If she fails here, will they forgive her? She doesn’t know which answer scares her more.

She throws her yo-yo to the sky like a lifeline.  With a tug, she’s yanked away from the empty streets, but she cannot escape them.  The wind rushes by her ears, and it’s a small relief from the silence.  A cold, fine mist begins to fall from the sky, obscuring the lifeless city below.  She welcomes it, allow ing it to envelop her as she perches herself  high  above the city.  The rain has always been a comfort.

She waits. It’s all she can do. She does not know where the villain is, and everything remains motionless.

They are waiting, she knows. Waiting for her to lose herself to her doubts and fears. Waiting for her to give up, give in to despair and loneliness. They’re underestimating her. They always do. She is nothing if not tenacious, and if she is ever to break under it all, it will be  _after_ she deals with the threat.  Even if it seems hopeless, it’s not over as long as she still has her earrings.

But she knows how to play the game, so she will show Papillon what he wants to see. She returns to the streets,  now slick from the misty rain. She’d prefer the rooftops, but the sky is confidence and power, and the Akuma will not reappear until Papillon is convinced of her desperation. So she walks, head bowed to keep the rain from her eyes.

She’s only half-faking. Every step only reminds her that she is the only one left, and even the rain can’t wash away the hollow feeling that leaves her with. She struggles – it’s a balance between appearing vulnerable and not letting her vulnerabilities take hold. And burning beneath is the itch to fight back, and that she struggles to hide.

_Step. Step. Step._

She’s walking too purposefully, she thinks. It wouldn’t matter, really, except that she knows she’s being watched.

Marinette isn’t a religious person. But she knows how it will look to turn to a higher power, and so she makes her way to Notre Dame. She goes to the altar and, for the first time, allows herself to mourn.

She does not cry, but an observer might mistake the rainwater dripping from her hair for tears.

But she certainly mourns. She mourns the vanished, all of the people who have been hurt, over and over and over and over by Papillon’s relentless hunger for the ultimate power. She mourns her partner, who is lost with the rest of them. She mourns her parents and her friends and it doesn’t matter right now that they’ll all be fine when she captures the akuma and restores everyone, because they’re not here _right now_.

She doesn’t want to let herself think this way, because afterwards it’ll be as though it never happened. And it should be like that, she should be _fine_ , because she fixes everything. It should be no worse than a nightmare, dismissed and easily forgotten with the light of day.

But her nightmares blend into her memories, and when attacks leave no trace, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. She pulls up the Ladyblog sometimes just to reassure herself that what happened was, or wasn’t real. But the Ladyblog can’t record everything, and reality itself can be altered. Chat Noir died in her arms, once, but it never happened, because time was undone and rewritten.

It wasn’t real. It shouldn’t be real.

It hurt her anyway.

And so would this. And right now, alone in an empty cathedral in a lifeless city that’s soaked in cold rain and blood, Marinette mourns for herself also. How can things just go back to normal, after this? And yet they do, and they will. She knows this, rationally. But it feels impossible, impossible to be just a girl, a child, laughing, dreaming, designing…

But she will. Somehow she is always stronger than she thinks she is. There has to be a limit, she thinks, but she hasn’t found it yet. And today won’t be the day that she does. She won’t let it.

Being Ladybug has given her burdens and fears far beyond what a child of her age should have to bear. But it has given her so much more – it has given her the means to be limitless. To overcome her doubts and her fears and her pain and continue on.

Supervillains are almost trivial in comparison.

Still, she doesn’t let her guard down. She waits, pulled in on herself, until the Akuma finally shows himself. She hears him approach, but she remains still until he speaks.

“Now that you’ve had a taste of my loneliness,” he says, his voice quiet, but loud enough between the two of them, “are you prepared to surrender?”

“Not a chance,” she says, standing up to face him. She holds her yo-yo tightly, and watches him warily, prepared for an attack. She knows that Isolation would prefer a psychological approach, but that doesn’t mean he won’t attack physically, either.

“You still don’t understand,” he says, and there’s a trace of anger in his soft voice. “But of course you don’t. I’ve been alone for years. Years I’ve watched people connect around me, and never been a part of it. You don’t yet understand the despair, the desperation.”

“I’m not afraid to be alone,” she says.

Only afraid for it to be her fault.

“You should,” he says. “We’re not meant to be alone. We’re not meant to spend years and years and years with the morning greeting of a coworker being the most meaningful connection with another human in our lives. We’re not meant to have nowhere to belong, to feel separate from every other person that walks this earth.”

Right now, the man standing before her is her enemy. But he is a victim, too, and she can hear the pain behind his words. Damn Papillon for twisting the suffering into nightmarish versions of themselves, damn him for using people’s pain against them and the city for his own selfish ends. Damn him, damn him, damn him.

When this is over, she will make sure the man in front of her gets the help he needs.

“Ladybug…” he continues, “you don’t understand. It’s easy for you, isn’t it? To belong. But how long do you think that will last? How long before the things you have seen and endured and can never share set you apart from the rest of society?”

“I still won’t be alone,” she says. “I have my partner, and he understands.”

The man laughs. It’s just as soft and uncomfortable as his voice.

“Do you really think you will have him? And where is he now? Where is he now, Ladybug?”

“I will bring him back, and everyone else you took, too.”

“Maybe you will,” the man concedes. Rare, for an Akuma – they’re usually confident of their victory until the end. “But this is one battle in a long war, and you know it. Do you really think you won’t outlive that boy? That foolish, reckless boy?”

That, out of everything Isolation has said, cuts her deeply. It’s a fear that’s always danced in the back of her mind, one that she always hates to even acknowledge out of that irrational, paranoid belief that acknowledging it will make it real.

She knows all too well that if this fight is going to claim one of their lives, it will be his. She’s seen it happen, over and over again. Chat Noir is all too willing to die for her. To die _because_ of her. She’s always brought him back before, but it only takes one failure. And that terrifies her.

She snaps into action, leaping into the air towards Isolation. He moves, but she anticipated that, and her yo-yo wraps behind him and ensnares him. With a twist of her wrist, she pulls the trapped Akuma towards her. She stares him down, inches from his face as her free hand closes around the possessed object.

“Do you really think,” she echoes, “that you can tell me anything I haven’t already told myself? You’re nothing that I haven’t faced before.”

She’s not talking about supervillains. Not really.

She doesn’t give him the chance to respond. The object is easily crushed in her hand, and falls to the ground as the dark butterfly emerges. She uncoils her yo-yo, releasing the dazed victim, and snaps up the akuma.

The purified butterfly floats away. Marinette watches it go, and calls for her power.

It’s a seed, she realizes. Bright red and spotted with black, but a seed nonetheless. A symbol of life.

She throws it to the sky, and as it bursts apart, the light sweeps over the city.

The city is safe again. She has won. She will always win.

She has to.


End file.
